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Portland Tram
Also named OHSU Tram (Oregon Health and Science University)

3300 ft long
500 ft rise
Amount of freeway lanes crossed in first 400' of slope length: 9
Secondary road crossings and intersections after freeway: 9
Highest point above ground: 178 feet
Tower 1 height: 197'
Capacity: 78
Cabin builder: Gangloff Cabins of Bern, Switzerland
Highest point above ground: 178 feet
Cabin designer: Angelil/Graham/Pfenniger/Scholl, based in Zurich, Switzerland
Cabin names – Walt and Jean
Walt Reynolds: First African American to graduate from OHSU
Jean Richardson: First female engineering graduate from Oregon State University
Derogatory banners on houses seen from the cabin: 0
Derogatory messages on houses seen from the cabin that were painted over: 2
Primary Drive: 600 HP DC
Evac Drive: Diesel Hydrostatic drive with 2nd standby hydrostatic backup
Top terminal is 140' tall and connects to the 9th floor of the hospital complex.
Cost: Initial est $15M… Final costs is somewhat intermingled with other hospital building construction but has been reported to be near $58M.
Vault Drive
Bottom terminal (cabin door) is at street level – there are no stairs at either terminal.
Picture is arranged so top is North and bottom is South
(Points just below Letters)
A – Bottom terminal – Large white roof above letter is a ship construction site.
B - Tower 1
C – Top terminal
Large red circle is the complex of hospitals.
If you look closely in the second image the tram crosses 9 lanes of freeway traffic.

Midspan

Top terminal

Top terminal structural aspects

Final image-
This last image is of a puddle from the new leaking rook is taken at the intersection of the top terminal walkway to the actual hospital. I like to call it the - $1 dollar roof on a $57 million tram – rather an odd way to welcome visitors and employees everyday.
Other observations –
On a warm day the cabin temperature can rise to close to 100 degrees, this is somewhat tempered by fans and is certainly endurable as the ride is around 3 minutes depending on the wait times.
A lot of employees bicycle to work using the tram for the uphill part.
Mountain bike ridership is increasing due to same uphill transportation benefit.
During business hours it’s not unusual to see the cars at close to full capacity for most of the day.
Employees and visitors have accepted this as a form of public transportation and treat it accordingly (a nonchalance attitude as if riding a bus).
The “cabin attendants” have a similar manner as the riders in the sense of ‘its public transportation”.
Tourist ridership is now making a larger percentage than was anticipated.
The tram manager is always looking for technicians as this tram runs 17 hours a day.
The City of Portland considers this a public conveyance like their bus service, hence the long day operating schedule.
The maintenance and operations oversight is contracted out to Dopplemayr.
The operating costs are split between the city of Portland and OHSU, with OHSU share closely based on employee ridership (about 85%).
Motor room is a vault drive.
Tram tickets can be purchased at the bottom terminal - however the ticket machine only takes credit or debit cards. Tickets can be purchased for cash in the large building next door… during business hours only.
The bottom terminal is designed for a city urban environment – plenty of concrete and no obvious doors or glass to vandalize.
The tram is one feature of Portland’s South Water Front District, currently there are over 10 multistory buildings that have been built in the last 3 years, with about 10 more to go…there is no economic down-turn in this area.
If you’re planning on visiting this ropeway the freeway access is challenging, best bet is to have a map and turning instructions handy.
Terrific views of the city and Mt. Hood…if its not raining.
I was given a motor room tour by tram manager Mike Commissaris, however I did not have a camera at that time.
Mike if you ever read this thanks for taking the time in your busy day to accommodate my unexpected tour.

All pictures were taken in January 2008

Nice pictures! I've passed under this MANY times on I-5 and was hoping to find some info on it!

Hey, how about a listing in the Chairlift Gallery?
This post has been edited by EagleAce: 24 April 2009 - 08:43 PM

I've also passed this thing before, it looks nice and has some really intresting towers.

Snoqualmie guy, on Apr 25 2009, 08:55 PM, said:

Tower (singular)

Oh, I thought it had two.

I love that bubble cabin design. Very futuristic.

Doppelmayr-YouTube posted a video about the Portland Tram.

https://www.youtube....h?v=QiT-RO23eu4
This post has been edited by SkiLiftsRock: 03 October 2014 - 01:44 PM

Both my uncle and cousin have ridden this lift way more than they wanted to in the last few years (liver transplant and leukemia, respectively). They've been impressed at how efficient it is.

Hi there

I enjoyed to ride this lift last week. This lift and Snowbird Tram are compared almost the same except this bubble cabin swing a little by strong windy.

Tower color light is beautiful at night.

I will post few pictures.

By the way, I found an information about "4T" It means Trail, Tram, Trolley and Train tour. It is fantastic. My daughter and I were going to do that 4T but we dropped due heavy raining all day. We will plan this summer. I will post pictures later.

http://www.oregonmet...nd_4T_trail.pdf
This post has been edited by Skiing#1: 25 January 2015 - 07:13 AM

This ropeway is now having a 10-year anniversary. At the time of this posting Portland just had a record snowfall (6-10”) along with ensuing city transportation shutdown, the tram is one of the few things running, and in fact goes to 24-hour operation in snow conditions.
 P-tram-bus.jpg (128.53K)
Number of downloads: 67
Anniversary website: https://www.gobytram...the-tram-is-ten
Portland has done a nice 360-degree picture tour of all the stations, image below is a screen capture of the motor room. If you look closely most of the major components are labeled…
 P-tram-m-room.jpg (98.62K)
Number of downloads: 107
360 views: http://www.gobytram.com/360

As mentioned in my first post, after much controversy about the project concerning funding, looks, and noise (hey its Portland what else would you expect) the tram sees full capacity most of the day. Notice the bike storage area.
 P-tram-bikes.jpg (99.65K)
Number of downloads: 93
Of interest to ski area maintenance guys… the haul rope has now been replaced twice due to operating hours and the short terminal distance. The rope change and splicing occur “in the air” next to large medical buildings with many windows.